Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

I explained that I had never met any other Americans in Puraustays.

“In Amerika you know him.”

“No. I never so much as saw him until they put him in my cell.”

“The Legion has him, you think?”

“You said it didn’t, that they would have taken me instead.”

“What I think does not matter. What is it you think?”

I said, “I don’t know what has taken him.”

“But not the Legion of the Light?”

I shook my head.

“You think something you fear. That is what I think, because I see it in your eyes. What is it?”

I said, “I don’t know what it is.”

“I ask again, where is it we should go?”

“I’ve already answered that. We ought to find out whether he had business connections here and check them out.”

“This still you think.”

I nodded.

“I have the idea, too. First I make the telephone call. You must excuse me.”

I thought she was going to the rest room, but she waltzed out of the café. I sat there awhile, mostly watching the pretty girl with the big red pen and the man who watched her, until the waiter came over. “You wish something more, sir?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“The lady…?”

“She’ll be back,” I said. I thought of telling him I had no money, which was the truth. But I did not say it.

“Perhaps she will want something more.” The waiter rubbed his chin.

I told him I did not know.

“Some nice fruits, it might be. I will tell the kitchen.”

The girl with the red pen looked up at me and smiled, and I smiled back. When Naala sat down with me again the girl was bent over her paper like before but I was still smiling.

“You are happy. You have think of something new.”

I shook my head. “I was just thinking that now I’m out of that prison and sitting in this nice café drinking good coffee. Where did you find a phone?”

“There are painted boxes on poles. Them you must have seen. They are for the police and I have a key. What is it, this new thing you think of? You must tell me.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about our problem,” I said. “How did your phone call go?”

“Well, of course. I have called the station nearest the palace. The archbishop must be at home for us at three o’clock. They will send a policeman to him. His secretary will protest, our policeman will insist that it must be so. He has a gun, the secretary none. Perhaps he fires at the floor. A better chance there is no need. The archbishop will be at home at three. He waits and more nervous grows. At four we come, I think. A little after four it may be. He tells us why he summons—”

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ve got that, anyway. But the archbishop lives in a palace?”

Naala lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “In a big house. Always this is called a palace. For bishops also. It must be big because offices are needed, not just rooms for sleeping and eating. What is your new idea? Still you do not say?”

“Because it isn’t much of an idea, really. Anybody would think of it.”

“I, not.” She touched her chest. “Tell me.”

“Well, Russ has a wife. Her name is Rosalee, and she got arrested the same time he did.”

“Ah! He will try to arrange the escape for her.”

“If she’s still in prison.” I nodded. “She may have been released by this time. If she has, she’s probably back in the States. That’s the first thing he’ll try to find out—whether she’s safe back home. If she is, he might try to get her to help him. It’ll depend on what he needs.”

I stopped for a minute to think. Russ and I had been pretty good friends. “He’s not really a spy, you know. He isn’t dangerous to your government at all.”

“About him I do not care,” Naala told me. “It is those who have freed him who concern me. You say he is not a spy, and it may be you are right. If you are, why it is they free him?”

I thought I knew, but I just shook my head.

“In time, we learn this. I think your new idea most good. This surprises you?”

“Yes. I’m surprised all right.”

“It is good first because we can begin before we speak with His Excellency. The Harktay—the prison for women—is here in this city. We will go there and speak with them. Perhaps also to this wife.”

As soon as we got there I saw I had been right when I told Russ they were easier on women. I had been expecting a big gray building, but it was not like that at all. There was a wire fence, maybe ten feet high, with barbed wire on top. Inside it were regular streets and buildings. Some were apartment buildings like the one Naala lived in, some had been stores once, and some had been houses. There were trees and grass around each building just like always, and you could see the women in there were proud of them and were taking care of them as good as they could. It looked to me like the trees were all fruit trees.

Here I have gotten ahead of myself again. I ought to have said first that the guards who let us in were women. They looked tough and they had uniforms and guns, but they were women. When they saw Naala’s badge they got very polite, and one of them walked us inside and pretty close to the middle of the compound where the warden’s office was. It had been an office supply store before, Naala said. We went in there, and a woman with no gun showed us into the warden’s office.

She was probably fifty-five or sixty, a big raw-boned woman with gray hair. Seeing her, I figured she had most likely been around while the communists still had power, and I wondered what she had been doing back then. People here do not shake hands much, but she stood up and shook Naala’s, and mine, too.

“Welcome!” She motioned toward a couple of swivel chairs. “You will get whatever it is you ask, if it is possible. We at the People’s Detention for Women are always glad to cooperate.”

Naala thanked her, and she clapped her hands and told the women who had showed us in to bring tea.

Naala said, “Eighteen months ago two Amerikan spies, husband and wife, were arrested at the border. The husband was taken to the Rural Reeducation Center. The wife was taken here.”

“I see. He has been released?”

Naala shook her head. “He has escaped. That he will try to communicate with her we think certain. He may try to free her as well.”

I said, “She could have been released.”

“So you think. It would be a major error.”

The warden asked the wife’s name, Naala gave it, and the warden turned to her computer. “She sleeps in Building One Twenty-four.”

“She is outside it now? Perhaps at work?”

“She should be, yes. Now it is the work-time. She will be…” More typing and tapping the screen. “Sewing. Building Seventeen. We make uniforms for the army.”

Naala spoke to me. “We can have her brought to us, or we can go to her. You think which?”

“Go to her,” I said.

“Why is this?”

“If we go to her, we can see what she’s doing, what her surroundings are like, who she’s working with, and so on. We can bring her here later if we want to, or take her someplace else.”

The warden wanted to know if I was Russian, and Naala shook her head. “You need not take us to the place where she works. I know you must be busy. Tell us where it is, and we will find it.”

“I could never be so discourteous,” the warden said. “I will assign a guide.”

“That will not be necessary. Where is it we must go?”

Stuff like this went on for a while, and I would not give it all here if I could. Pretty soon I could see that Naala wanted us to be free to snoop around, and the warden wanted to keep us from doing it.

Finally we got the guide, a short fat woman with a whistle around her neck. She lectured us about the prison the whole way. Most of the women were in for shoplifting, and they got reeducation to teach them that stealing from stores was wrong. I could tell it was strictly the company line and did not pay a lot of attention to it.